Day: May 27, 2011
Burma-Myanmar, China seal friendship with loan agreements more than 540 million euros
BEIJING – Myanmar and China sealed their friendship with loan and credit line agreements worth more than 540 million euros (US$765 million) on Friday, as the former Burma’s new president praised the Chinese as a trustworthy, selfless ally.
‘China is a friendly neighbour of Myanmar’s worthy of trust and has provided vigorous support and selfless help for Myanmar’s economic development,’ Myanmar’s new civilian president, Thein Sein, told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, state television reported.
Mr Wen said Beijing was willing to provide what help it can to help Myanmar’s development and ensure the ‘smooth progress’ of oil and gas pipelines being built across Myanmar into south-western China, seen as crucial to China’s energy security.
Mr Thein Sein and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed nine agreements, including a cooperation framework agreement for a 540 million euro line of credit from China Development Bank to Myanmar’s Ministry of Taxation and Finance.
Other loan deals were agreed between various Chinese and Myanmar ministries, while another covered a hydroelectric project. No further details were given.
Mr Thein Sein, a loyalist of the reclusive former paramount leader Than Shwe, is no stranger to China, having met top Chinese leaders in the past in his previous official capacities, including as prime minister.
While Western nations slammed Myanmar’s election last year as a sham, Beijing has shown no such concerns.
Mr Hu offered his ‘warm congratulations’ to Mr Thein Sein for his appointment as president after the elections, which Myanmar lauded as the culmination of efforts to return the country to civilian rule.
‘I believe your visit to China will be advantageous to increasing our mutual understanding and will write a new page in 21st century friendship and cooperation between China and Myanmar,’ Mr Hu said, according to a pool report.
Economic relations are already booming.
Bilateral trade rose more than half last year to US$4.4 billion, and China’s investment in Myanmar reached US$12.3 billion in 2010, according to Chinese figures, with a strong focus on natural resources and energy projects.
Diplomatically, China provides Myanmar with crucial cover at the United Nations, fending off calls for tougher action demanded by the West on Myanmar’s human rights record.
For its part, Myanmar gives China access to the Indian Ocean, not only for imports of oil and gas and exports from landlocked south-western Chinese provinces, but also potentially for military bases or listening posts.
In October, China’s state energy group CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
But relations have not all been smooth.
China has frequently expressed its concern at instability along their often mountainous and remote border, where rebel groups deeply involved in the narcotics trade have been fighting Myanmar’s central government for decades.
In August 2009, refugees flooded across into China following fighting on the Myanmar side of the border between rebels and government troops, promoting an unusually public show of anger from Beijing towards its poor southern neighbour.
Both sides must ‘coordinate their management to maintain stability on the border’, Mr Hu told Mr Thein Sein, state television said. — REUTERS
http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/latest/story/0,4574,440828,00.html?
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to test her freedom
Aung San Suu Kyi to test limits of freedom with Burma tourAung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy leader, is to test the will of the nation’s military-controlled government through a series of public speeches outside Rangoon.Six months after the government ended her seven-year spell of house arrest, Ms Suu Kyi has made it clear that she intends to go ahead with rallies that will culminate in a visit to Burma’s former capital, Mandalay, The Times quoted a close political ally as saying. “She told me recently that she has decided, and that she will go to the countryside in one or two months’ time,” Win Tin, a close friend of Ms Suu Kyi and one of the founders of the National League for Democracy, told the Times.
Mr Win, who spent 20 years as a political prisoner, said he had received indications from the government that there was no threat to Ms Suu Kyi’s personal safety, but that clashes between her supporters and the military were possible.
Ms Suu Kyi’s decision to tour the country will be welcomed by her supporters, who have been disappointed at the slow rate of political change in Burma and the NLD’s failure to be more forceful in politics since her release.
Exile groups have been calling for the Nobel Peace Prize winner to “test the waters of her supposed freedom” and to campaign outside the capital, although there are risks attached to this strategy.
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WAR:First gunfire in N. Burma after KIA deadline
A Kachin News Group (KNG) reporter, who was near the fighting said the gunfire lasted for several minutes at Wa Myi Kawng, in Shadan Ga Gaw area, near Manje (Mansi) Town, in southeastern Bhamo (Manmaw) District.
KIA officials at the Laiza Headquarters confirmed to the Thailand-based Kachin News Group, the exchange of small gunfire took place between troops from the KIA’s Battalion 27 and the Burmese Army’s Sarhmaw-based Infantry Battalion (IB) No. 105, which is stationed at Kai Htik military post, on the Bhamo-Nam Hkam route.
The latest military clash emerged while the military-controlled Burmese government’s President U Thein Sein is visiting China for three days, starting yesterday, May 26. Continue reading “WAR:First gunfire in N. Burma after KIA deadline”
မိုင်းလားတပ်ဖွဲ့ ရုပ်ပေးလိုက်ရသည့်ဒေသ မြန်မာစစ်တပ် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်
ပြီးခဲ့သည့်လက မိုင်းယောင်းမြို့နယ်အတွင်းမိုင်းလား တပ်စခန်းအချို့ရုပ်သိမ်း၍ မြန်မာစစ်တပ် ဝင်ရောက် အခြေချလာသည့် နောက်ပိုင်း ဒေသခံများလူ့အခွင့် အရေးအမျိုးမျိုးချိုးဖောက်ခံနေကြောင်းဒေသခံများ ပြောပြ ချက်အသိရပါသည်။
“ကျနော်တို့ စစ်တပ်အတွက် လုပ်အားပေးရတာ၊ အိမ်မွေးတိရိစ္ဆာန်တွေ ဖမ်းစားတာ အခုမှ ကြုံဖူးတယ် ” – ဟု တာချီလိတ်ရောက် ဝမ့်ခိုးဒေသခံတဦးကပြောပြပါသည်။
မိုင်းလားတပ်ဖွဲ့ထိန်းချုပ်နယ်မြေနှင့် တပ်စခန်းတချို့ပြ မြေပုံသံလွင်အရှေ့ခြမ်း မိုင်းယောင်းမြို့နယ် မဲခေါင်မြစ်အနောက်ဖက်ကြောရှိ ဝမ့်ခိုးတပ်စခန်း နှင့် ပုံဟက် တပ်စခန်းအား မိုင်းလားတပ် ဖွဲ့ ရုပ်သိမ်းပေးပြီး နောက် ပိုင်း မိုင်းဖြတ်အခြေစိုက် စကခ ၁၈ လက်အောက်ခံ ခမယ ၅၇၀ နဲ့ ၅၇၃ တို့ ရောက်တပ်ချထား၏။ ထိုမြန်မာတပ်များကပင် ဒေသခံလူထုအပေါ် တပ်စခန်း တည်ဆောက်ရေး နေ့စဉ်ရက် ဆက် လုပ်အားပေးဆင့်ခေါ်နေသည့်အပြင် ဒေသခံများ၏ အိမ်မွေး ကြက်၊ ဝက်၊ ဘဲ၊ နွားများလည်း ဖမ်းယူ သတ်ဖြတ်စားသောက်ကြောင်း နောက်တဦးက ဤကဲ့သို့ပြောပြ ပါသည်။
“ဝမ့်ခိုးကျေးရွာအုပ်စုထဲက ကြက်ဝက်တွေ အဓမ္မ အလကားယူစားတာ မရေမတွက်နိုင်တော့ဘူး။ ပုံဟက်ရွာက နွားတွေ ဗမာတွေ ယူစားတာ ၇ ကောင်ရှိပြီ၊ ဗမာတပ် ရောက်လာတာ သူခိုးဓါးပြရောက်လာတဲ့ အတိုင်းဘဲ” – ဟု ဆို၏။
မိုင်းလားတပ်ဖွဲ့၏ နမ့်လွေမြစ်ဝ (ဆွပ်လွေ) တောင်ဖက်ရှိ မိုင်းဖှန် တပ်စခန်း ထပ်မံဆုတ်ပေးရန် မြန်မာ စစ်တပ် ဖိအားမပေးသေး သော်လည်း မိုင်းလားဖက်မှတပ်ဆုပ် ပေး မည့်အလားအလာမရှိကြောင်း၊ မိုင်းလားနှင့် ဝ ပူးပေါင်းတပ်ဖွဲ့တို့ ထပ်မံအင် အား ဖြည့် တပ်ချဲ့ထားကြောင်း မိုင်းယောင်း ပြည်သူ့ စစ်တပ်ဖွဲ့ခေါင်းဆောင်ပိုင်းနှင့်နီးစပ်သည့် ပုဂ္ဂိုလ်တဦးက ပြောပါသည်။
ထို့အတူ သျှမ်းပြည်တပ်မတော် RCSS/SSA တပ်ဖွဲ့ လှုပ်ရှားနေသည်ဆိုသည့်သတင်းကြောင့် စကခ ၁၈ လက်အောက်ခံ ခမယ ၃၃၅ (မိုင်းဖြတ်) အင်အား ၃၀ ခန့်က (မိုင်းဖြတ်မြို့နယ်ရှိ နမ့်ယုံး၊ ဝမ့်မုန့်၊ မိုင်း ဖြတ်) လားဟူပြည်သူ့စစ်အဖွဲ့ စုပေါင်း အင်အား ၇၀ ကျော်အားဆင့်ခေါ်၍ မိုင်းဖြတ်မြို့ အရှေ့ မြောက်ဘက်( မိုင်းဖြတ် – မိုင်းယောင်း ကားလမ်းမြောက်ဘက်ခြမ်း) မိုင် ၂၀ ခန့်ဝေး သည့် မိုင်းတင်း၊ လန်း ဆတ်၊ မိုင်းကာယီ၊ မိုင်းငွမ်း ကျေးရွာဘက်သွားရောက်လှုပ်ရှားခဲ့သည်ဟုဆို၏။ Continue reading “မိုင်းလားတပ်ဖွဲ့ ရုပ်ပေးလိုက်ရသည့်ဒေသ မြန်မာစစ်တပ် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်”
Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Yun met only ethnic members of the Committee Representing People’s Parliament (CRPP)
27 May 2011
Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Yun met only ethnic members of the Committee Representing People’s Parliament (CRPP) who were not in a position to speak for all the non-Burmans. He should instead have asked to meet the United Nationalities Alliance (UNA), a coalition made up of 1990 elected ethnic representatives, said Shan Nationalities League for Democracy spokesman Sai Lake. (SHAN)
Army Controls Arakan’s Most Famous Pagoda
Kyauk Taw: The army has taken control of Mahamuni Pagoda, the most famous pagoda in western Burma’s Arakan State, and has been appointing people to serve as trustees of the pagoda, said local residents.
The pagoda is situated near the site of the ancient city of Danyawaddy in Tharaktapun village in Kyauktaw Township in northeastern Arakan State, where the Military Operations Command 9, or MOC-9, is stationed.
“The pagoda trustee board has no authority to do anything for the pagoda because everything concerned with the pagoda is now being controlled by the commander of Military Operations Command 9,” said a resident living in a village nearby the pagoda. Continue reading “Army Controls Arakan’s Most Famous Pagoda”
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